Molded articles including reinforcing fibers and thermoplastic resins are light in weight and have an excellent dynamic characteristic so that they are widely used for sporting goods, aerospace applications, general industries or the like. Reinforcing fibers used for such molded articles reinforce the molded articles in various forms according to the intended use. Used as such reinforcing fibers are metal fibers such as aluminum fibers or stainless steel fibers; organic fibers such as aramid fibers or PBO (poly-p-phenylenebenzoxazole); inorganic fibers such as silicon carbide fibers, carbon fibers, or the like. Carbon fibers are suitable from the viewpoint of balance of specific strength, specific rigidity and lightness, and, among them, polyacrylonitrile (PAN)-based carbon fibers are suitably used.
Since carbon fibers have excellent specific strength and specific rigidity, a molded article reinforced by carbon fibers has an excellent mechanical characteristic. However, in the above intended use, a requirement for further weight reduction or thickness reduction is accompanied by a requirement for further improvement of the dynamic characteristic.
As a molding material having excellent fiber dispersibility, a molding material (see Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication No. 2012-56232, for example) obtained by bonding a thermoplastic resin to a composite reinforcing fiber filament has been proposed, for example. Moreover, as a fiber reinforced thermoplastic resin composition having an excellent mechanical characteristic, or more particularly an excellent impact characteristic, a polycarbonate-based resin, a rubber-containing styrene-based resin, a polycarbonate-based resin composition (see Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication No. 2008-38003, for example) composed of an acid-modified olefin compound and carbon fibers, a fiber reinforced thermoplastic resin composition (see Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication No. H07-238213, for example) obtained by blending olefinic wax and composite rubber-based graft copolymer into an aromatic polycarbonate resin composition containing reinforcing fibers, and the like have been proposed. On the other hand, as a thermoplastic resin composition having low metal corrosiveness and an excellent thermal conductivity characteristic, a thermoplastic resin composition (see Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication No. 2007-31611, for example) composed of thermoplastic resin, lubricant and the like, a thermally conductive resin material (see International Publication WO 2007/116973, for example) including thermoplastic resin and a fibrous filler and the like have been proposed.
However, all of the techniques disclosed in JP '232, JP '003, JP '213, JP '611 and WO '973 have a problem in that a molded article has insufficient impact strength. It could therefore be helpful to provide a fiber reinforced thermoplastic resin molded article having excellent impact strength, whereby breakage of reinforcing fibers is suppressed when impact is applied to the molded article.